Sea fighter

by James H. Cobb

  Gueletti shrugged. “The heaviest you can get. Quarter mile lengths of four-inch steel hawser. All new stuff.”

  “All right,” Amanda replied slowly. “All right, that’s how we’re going to do it. You’re right about the anchor chains. We can’t safely turn her on one of those. We don’t have enough play. But we can turn her on one of your towing lines.”

  The Seabee cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t see how. Our towing hawsers could hold one or maybe even two of our barges in this kind of sea state, but not the whole platform. We’d snap that wire like it was a thread.”

  “That’s just it, Steve,” Amanda replied, the excitement and surety growing in her voice. “We don’t have to hold the platform with it. We just have to provide a point of resistance the platform can turn itself around. We’ll shackle two of your towing cables together. Then we lift our anchors and let the platform drift a short distance, paying out one of the lengths of hawser as we go, to create our anchor harness. Then, as we start feeding out the second cable section, we apply the wild cat brake on the cable feed. We create drag on the line while still deploying cable fast enough to keep the cable below breaking tension. That point of resistance will turn us into the wind. It will be like using a drag anchor on the bottom. Except that we’ll be producing the drag at the topside end.”

  “And we’d still have enough control on our drift to keep us from going off of the bank,” Gueletti agreed, catching hold of the idea. “But what kind of hook can we put down that we can be sure won’t shift?”

  “A big one, Steve,” Amanda replied. “A real big one.”

  “What do you have in mind? The biggest we have is five tons.”

  “No. We can do a lot better than that.” Amanda pushed away from the chart table and crossed to the lee-side windows. “There’s our anchor right there.”

  She pointed down to the blackened and battered hulk of the HMS Skye, moored to the sheltered downwind side of the platform.

  “We run our cable aboard the Skye and secure it around the main engine mounts. Then we cut her loose and scuttle her with a demolition charge. She displaces almost five hundred tons. There’s no way we’re going to drag that around behind us.”

  “Captain,” Gueletti said, aghast, “that’s a Royal Navy man-of-war down there! We don’t have the authority to order it sunk.”

  “Commander, that minehunter’s going to be just another piece of junk washed up on a Union beach if this platform breaks up. The Skye’s lost, no matter what. But if we sacrifice her in this way, we may be able to save Floater 1.”

  The platform commander considered for a moment. “Hell, I guess you’re right, ma’am. The taxpayers can buy the Brits another minesweep later.”

  “Exactly, Steve. Now, do you have a demolitions man who could rig a set of charges aboard the Skye that could put her on the bottom fast without compromising her structural integrity,?”

  “Ma’am, I’ve got a couple of master blasters in this outfit who could blow your bra off without bruising your … skin.”

  The phrase “wooden ships and iron men” is a canard, a sly hint that the modern steel-age sailor is not the equal of his tar-and-oakum forebears. To Amanda Garrett, that concept was baseless. As a true mariner, she recognized the World Ocean as something elemental and unsubmitting. All of man’s strengths and technologies, no matter of what age or level, are toylike when matched in a direct confrontation.

  That night, amid the screaming madness of Hurricane Ivan, the labors of Floater 1’s crew were as epic as any performed aboard the square-riggers of the past. It was “one hand for the ship and one hand for yourself” as the massive lengths of steel hawser were stricken up from below and shackled together. No plans had been made for such work when the platform had been built. No machinery was in place to perform the task.

  Seabee muscle power jackassed tons of wire cable across the bucking, tempest-raked decks, feeding it through makeshift guides around the platform’ s perimeter to the Skye’s moorage. From there the far end was taken aboard the minesweep and down a passageway to be secured around a series of load-bearing hardpoints within the hull. Simultaneously, demolitions personnel worked in the flooded bilges of the little ship, grimly rigging their charges as stinking oil tainted seawater rolled over them with each storm toss.

  Six of Floater 1’s barges were taking water by the time the task was done.

  A small cluster of people huddled in the lee of a deck module: Amanda, Chief Tehoa, the demolitions team, and the remnants of the Skye’s crew.

  Amanda cupped her hands protectively around the ear piece and microphone of the command headset she wore. Two other “weatherproof’ communicator units had already shorted out on her. “Tower, we’re ready to go down here,” she yelled into the mike.

  “Standing by here as well.” The reply could be heard only faintly over the wind roar. “All capstan rooms manned and ready.”

  “Proceeding.” Amanda lifted her eyes to the senior demo man. “Cut her loose!”

  The Seabee nodded. Flipping a switch guard up on the detonator box he carried, he depressed a button.

  Loops of det cord fired with a piercing crack, slicing through the Skye’s mooring lines and freeing the warship. The clawing talons of the storm caught at her blackened upper works and she began to drift downwind, a tattered white ensign still flickering at her jackstaff. Steel squealed and rasped as loops of heavy towing cable trailed over the side after her, far lighter wire peeling off the reel connected to the onboard scuttling charges.

  Amanda saw the bleak expressions on the faces of the British seamen as they watched the Skye depart on her last voyage. Especially she noted the jaw-clinching despair on the face of the minesweep’ s young captain.

  “Leftenant Traynor,” she called, “I am truly sorry we have to do this.”

  “It’s quite all right, ma’am,” he replied, suppressing the tremor in his voice. “At least she’s dying for a good cause.” The British officer extended a hand to the demo man. “If you please, Chief. She’s my responsibility.”

  Amanda nodded and the Seabee passed over the demolition control box. Traynor flipped up the second switch guard. “Ship’s company,” he called hoarsely, “salute!”

  As best they could on the unsteady deck, the men of the Skye came to attention, hands lifting to honor the silhouette that was fading beyond the sheeting rain and spray. Traynor’s thumb stabbed down on the button and the Skye’s outline blazed with blue-white glory for an instant.

  Then the sea avalanched through the dozen gaps blasted in her hull. In a matter of moments, the minesweep capsized, wrapping herself in the towing hawser as she settled. And then she was gone, and only the shriek of the cable going over the side marked her passage.

  “Ship’s company,” Traynor’s voice trailed away in the wind, “stand at ease.”

  “All right.” It was Amanda’s turn to lift her voice over the storm. “Let’s get this thing done!”

  Amanda elected to place her command post on site at the winch station of Barge 2, the central segment of the forward-most tier of the platform. The wire cable would be fed up from belowdecks at this point, run through the cable brake, and fed over the barge’s bow. As the rest of the handling crew fell back to safety, Amanda and Tehoa hauled themselves onto the small open platform beside the cable feed. Exposed to the full force of the hundred-knot wind gusts and the buckshot patterns of rain and spray, they latched their safety belts to the railing. Chief Tehoa gave the broad horizontal wheel of the wildcat brake half a turn to test the mechanism, while Amanda activated the handheld Global Positioning Unit she carried. She acquired Floater 1’s coordinates on the palm-size screen of the little unit, locking down the platform’s position. With no visual reference points available in the storm murk, the GPU would serve as her drift gauge.

  “Ready, Chief?” she yelled.

 
; “Guess so, ma’am. Still think it’ll work?”

  “No problem, Chief. It’s just like catching a thirty-pound catfish on a twenty-pound bass rig.”

  She caught the flash of Tehoa’s grin in the glare of a lightning stroke. “I’ve never managed to pull that one off, ma’am.”

  “Neither have I.” Amanda keyed her headset. “Tower, we’re ready to raise anchors.”

  “Proceed, Captain. You are on circuit with the capstan rooms. Good Lord, ride all the way!”

  Amanda wrestled another lungful of air from the torrent flowing over her. “All capstan rooms! Heave round!”

  Moments later, Amanda felt the vibration. Massive electric motors engaged deep within each barge. Slime-covered steel links, each the diameter of a baseball bat, rose up out of the boiling waters of the anchor wells. Forty fathoms below, the anchors themselves, each an inverted ten-thousand-pound parasol of solid metal, started to shift and walk on the seafloor, the play coming out of their chains.

  Another wave quartered onto the platform. Restrained now by her tautening ground tackle, Floater 1 moaned in agony as the waters crashed over her. Tie-downs snapped and a CONEX container toppled over the side. Then she lifted, and the sea shouldered under the platform with a prolonged, yielding shudder.

  “Number four breaking ground,” a thin voice cried in the headset.

  “Number one breaking ground.”

  “Number seven breaking ground.”

  “Number five …” “Number eight …” “Number six …” Calls overrode as, one after another, the anchors tore loose from the bottom.

  “All anchors aweigh, Captain!”

  The position numbers on Amanda’s GPU screen began to flicker and change. Floater 1 was adrift. No longer fighting the storm, the massive structure was now being driven before it.

  Amanda pressed her lip mike close to her mouth. “Capstan rooms. Retract to ten fathoms! We’re passing over the wreck of the Skye. Get clearance! Don’t let her foul!”

  Crack! One of the heavy nylon ropes that served as a cable guide parted like a piece of yarn. As the platform drifted back over the hulk of the British minehunter, the towing hawser peeled away from the barge railings, coming around from the lee side to align forward off the bow.

  Crack! Crack! Crack! WHAM!

  The last guide snapped, and the four-inch wire hawser whipped out ahead of the platform, taking half a dozen railing stanchions with it in an explosive sweep of sparks. As Amanda and the Chief looked on, cable began to feed up through the wildcat guides from belowdecks.

  “Give her some slack!” Amanda yelled “Let’s get some play out there!”

  Tehoa nodded, hunching over the brake wheel.

  Looking straight forward off the platform, Amanda could feel the wind batter at her left cheek. When she felt that wind full in her face, they would be aligned into the storm. She glanced down at the line counter on the winch station railing: 450 yards in the can and feeding rapidly as the platform gained way in its drift toward the coast.

  “Stand by! … Set your wildcat!”

  Chief Tehoa spun the braking wheel, closing the wildcat jaws. The grating shriek of metal on metal overrode the storm, and the deck plates beneath their feet trembled.

  There was no immediate shift in the platform’s heading. Given Floater 1’s mammoth displacement, she would be slow to react to the comparatively slight tug of the anchor cable. Amanda knew that would be the trick, to bring time, cable length, and braking strain together in one perfect balanced equation. It was impossible to make a voice heard over the audial chaos, and Amanda made a palms-down feathering gesture with her hand, instructing Chief Tehoa to play the line.

  A hundred yards stripped out of the cable tier without measurable effect.

  Amanda frowned in to the force of the hurricane. The driving sea had the platform solidly in its jaws and didn’t want to let go. They were still quartering. She couldn’t feel any bearing change. Her thumb jerked upward. Increase tension!

  Tehoa heaved on the brake wheel, taking it up another half turn. The shriek became a piercing dentist’s drill scream. A plume of sparks sluiced from the cable guides, spraying across the sea-washed deck in front of the station.

  Two hundred and fifty yards left.

  A seventh wave loomed above the leading edge of the platform. Amanda’s thumb stabbed downward. Slack off! Ben Tehoa spun the wildcat wheel like a truck driver fighting a skid on an icy road.

  A wall of water smashed down on the winch station. Grimly, the officer and the CPO clung to the railing and to consciousness as anchor line whipped away over the side, writhing in the cable guides like an enraged python seeking its freedom.

  Amanda clawed her sodden hair out of her eyes and sought for the cable gauge in the half-light.

  One hundred fifty yards remaining.

  Her thumb stabbed upward repeatedly. Take it up! Go for broke! All the way!

  Tehoa’s muscles bulged under the wind-tattered remnants of his khaki shirt. Jaw set in a savage grimace, he strained at the spokes of the wheel, drawing steel down on steel, levering closed the bands of the cable brake.

  Lightning blazed across the sky, momentarily illuminating the decks with a flashbulb clarity. Amanda was startled to see that both she and the big Samoan CPO seemed to be covered with blood. It took her a moment to realize that it was rust flayed off the anchor cable. Mixing with the sea spray on the decks and caught by the storm winds, it blew back upon them. She could taste the iron bite of it on her tongue.

  The anchor line stretched out beyond the platform, beyond the limit of vision, still angling off to port, yet as straight as a knife’s edge and as taut as a set guitar string. Its test load exceeded, the arm-thick mass of steel wire was actually stretching like a drawn rubber band. Should it snap, the broken end would whip back aboard the platform with the impact of an eight-inch shell, demolishing the winch station and any one nearby.

  And yet Amanda could only continue to sign, Take it up!

  And then she noted the wind. At long last the wind was edging around to strike her full in the face. Floater 1 was turning into the storm.

  “A little more!” she screamed, although no one but she could hear. “Come on, a little more.”

  Another massive sea struck the platform, only this time instead of flinching away from the impact, the barges lifted their heads and rode over it.

  “Come on, you big bitch! Just a little more!”

  The line counter snapped down from triple to double digits.

  Amanda cupped her hands over the lip mike, a hideous thought striking at the same instant. Dear God, what if this headset had flooded out too!

  “Drop all anchors! Drop all anchors!” She could only scream the command over and over and pray that someone would hear. And then the deck trembled under her feet and she knew they had won.

  Forty-five tons of metal smashed into the Gold Coast seafloor, the massive scooplike anchors digging in, gouging trenches through the sand and bottom muck, bleeding away Floater 1’s accumulated inertia and holding fast in the face of Ivan’s wrath.

  On the screen of Amanda’s handheld GPU the position stopped flickering and held steady. The screech of the wildcat brake ground down into silence, the simple roar of the storm seeming almost quiet in comparison. Amanda glanced at the cable meter.

  Fourteen yards.

  “Tower, this is Garrett,” she called. “I read the platform as stable by GPU fix. Do you concur?”

  “We confirm that, Captain,” Gueletti replied jubilantly. “Platform is stable. Well done, ma’am! We’re going to make it.”

  They were. Oriented into the face of the storm, Floater 1 rode the weather now as she had been designed to, the big barges flowing up and over the incoming rollers sequentially, the interstructural colliding and twisting relieved
.

  In a lightning flicker, she grinned wearily at Tehoa, who grinned back in turn, sailor to sailor.

  “Lock the brake, Chief,” she called. “Let’s go get some coffee.”

  Mobile Offshore Base, Floater 1 2010 Hours, Zone Time; July 23, 2007

  Amanda started awake with the surprise of someone who hadn’t realized they had been asleep. She recalled wedging herself in place in an inactive workstation up in the command tower, intending to rest just for a moment. But that had been … when? Her accumulation of stiff and aching muscles and vertebrae indicated it must have been some time ago.

  Then she noted the stillness. The tower no longer swayed wildly with excessive wave motion. The wind no longer roared and bellowed, demanding admission.

  It was over.

  Outside, darkness was settling over the sea. The true darkness of evening and not the shrouded dimness of the storm. Enough light yet lingered to show an abating sea, its violence spent as if it, too, had grown weary. And far away in the west a scarlet streak glowed across the horizon.

  Red sky at night. / Sailor’s delight.

  “Evening, Captain.” Commander Gueletti stood backlit by the console screens. “Looks like the show’s over.”

  “Looks like,” Amanda agreed, standing and stretching out a multitude of kinked muscles. “Where’s Chief Tehoa?”

  “He’s back down working with the damage-control parties. A hell of a good man, that.”

  “I won’t argue that point. How are we standing, Commander?”

  “It could have been a whole lot worse,” the Seabee replied. “We haven’t found any appreciable frame damage in any of the barges yet, and we didn’t lose any plates. We’re pumping out the flooded cells now. I think we can patch her up well enough to stay on station.”

  “How about our running gear?”

  “It’s torn up some, and we lost a couple of modules over the side. Nothing we can’t fix or do without, though.”

  Amanda nodded, running a hand through her salt-sticky hair. Maybe a hot shower wasn’t such an impossible dream after all. “Do we have damage reports in from the other bases?”